Can Just Anyone Land at New York City's Heliports?

Tuesday's fatal helicopter crash in the East River brought up questions about the airspace surrounding New York and its heliports. Who exactly is allowed to fly along the scenic Hudson and East Rivers? We asked amateur pilot and PM Contributing Editor Jeff Wise to explain the unrestricted airspace surrounding Manhattan.

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Investigators are still trying to determine the causes of Tuesday's crash of a Bell 206 helicopter into the East River in New York City, just 50 yards of the East 34th Street Heliport. But the political fallout has already begun: Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, whose district includes the heliport, is using the accident to call attention to the regulation of helicopter traffic in the city. Under the current rules, who can fly and land a helo in the Big Apple?

Between private helos, helicopters chartered for regular aerial tours of the city, and aircraft, there are plenty of helicopters taking off and landing from New York's heliports every day. With no many helos flying so close to skyscrapers and highly traveled roads, you might think helicopter flights and landings are tightly monitored. But this air traffic is not controlled the way airline traffic is.

As PM Contributing Editor Jeff Wise noted in his a story after the 2006 airplane crash that killed New York Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle, the area surrounding the helipad is unrestricted air space. It's called the East River VFR corridor. VFR stands for "Visual Flight Rules," and it means the only things keeping pilots from colliding are their own eyes.

Anyone with a registered aircraft and license can fly in this zone—which extends from the southern tip of Governor's Island to the northern point of Roosevelt Island, and has a ceiling of 1,500 ft—provided they announce their presence on the designated radio frequency of 123.075 MHz. As pilots fly through the unrestricted airspace at an altitude of about 1000 feet (any higher and LaGuardia Airport controllers would need to direct them), they announce the registration number of their plane and their bearing as they pass designated points. The same kind to announcement rules apply to other parts of the city's airspace, too. For example, Wise says, as he flies over the George Washington Bridge he would say "N44970E over the George Washington Bridge." But usually pilots aren't that specific. "Just as long as you say something to the effect of who you are and what you're doing, you're fine," Wise says.

Landing at the East 34th Street Heliport is just as wide-open as flying along the East River. Because there is no air traffic control tower governing the heliport, it's up to the pilots to make sure they don't land on top of one another. To land, a helicopter pilot would announce the heliport over the radio, and the exact space the helo will be landing on.

Flying and landing a helicopter in New York, then, is more like driving a car than flying a jet—the safety of the unrestricted airspaces surrounding Manhattan is dependent upon the operators themselves. The fact that there will be some accidents is unavoidable with helicopter flight, but pilots are careful pay close attention to who's in the airspace. "If you're in the same place at the same time you might say 'Red and white Cessna, where are you exactly? Because I'm at such-and-such a place,'" Wise says. Normally, pilots chat to keep one other updated on their locations and avoid collisions. "It's not super hairy," he says. "I've definitely been worse places."